If It Was Easy, They'd Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon by Jenna McCarthy Page B

Purchased in bulk, the lowly pierogi may be the one convenience food that is even cheaper than and inferior to ramen noodles.)
    This is where my story of culinary deliverance takes on an ironic edge Alanis Morissette would appreciate. If you recall, we now had two kitchens merely because what I originally felt was my home’s most compelling feature turned out to be a mirage. To my great disdain I continued to serve as the primary kitchen wench—until the fortuitous day that Joe discovered the convergence of food and television in the form of the Food Network. I wasn’t there when it happened, but imagine how you’d feel if you discovered that two of your favorite things in the world—like petit fours and pedicures, or Dancing with the Stars and dirty martinis—had somehow been rolled into a delicious model of one-stop shopping. Talk about televangelism!
    I didn’t even notice it at first, because as I may have mentioned, I don’t watch much TV. But one day I was scrolling through the TiVo lineup looking for something to occupy the girls and I noticed a bunch of strange titles: Boy Meets Grill. Throwdown with Bobby Flay. 30-Minute Meals. Diners, Driveins and Dives .
    “I saw a bunch of cooking shows scheduled on the TiVo thingy,” I mentioned casually later that day. “Do you watch any of those?”
    “Sometimes, a little, I don’t know, yeah,” Joe stammered. He sounded guilty, like I was his mom and I was grilling him—so to speak—about the baggie full of funny-smelling parsley I found in his jacket pocket.
    Relieved that the only breasts he was ogling after I went to bed belonged to dead chickens, I let it go. Then my birthday rolled around.
    Joe likes to wrap presents in newspaper. To be extra ironic, he likes to wrap my presents in the sports pages. Anyhow, as I tore through a piece about our local high school football team, I very nearly went into early cardiac arrest when it became clear that I was now the proud owner of the latest Williams-Sonoma cookbook, simply titled Grilling . If the steak on the cover had been a man, it would have been Hugh Jackman, his bronzed body dewy with sweat and wearing nothing but a smile. My mouth immediately started to water. But really? A fucking cookbook ?
    “I know what you’re probably thinking,” Joe said, rushing to preempt my disappointment. “But I am going to make everything in that book for you. Every week I want you to pick something new and I’ll make it. And shop for all of the ingredients. And clean it all up.”
    For once, I was speechless. I didn’t even screw it up by pointing out the still unfair six-to-one weekly division of labor. I gushed and fawned appropriately, and proceeded to dog-ear the pages of the most delectable-looking recipes. Something is always better than nothing, I reminded myself. And those scallop and mushroom brochettes better rock my little world.

“At Least You’re Not Married to Him”
    My husband makes these gross things I call “scrumples” where he
crumples a napkin at the end of a meal and sometimes blows his nose
in it and sometimes even kind of wipes his tongue with it if he has
snotty mucus. I hate it. He leaves the crumpled napkin on his dirty
plate. If he hadn’t cooked the meal (he’s a chef)—and he does cook
every meal—it would be grounds for divorce or a Lorena Bobbitt move
at the very least. I hate the scrumples but I love him.
    DIANA
     
     
    Before long I noticed that Joe was cooking—or at least, contributing to the cooking—more than once a week. A lot more than once, in fact. I started to get cocky, even grocery shopping without a list. As long as I bought some sort of meat, he could figure out what to do with it and make it taste good. The positive impact of this skill on our marriage truly cannot be overstated. The kids became so accustomed to our tag-team efforts in the kitchen that rarely did we enjoy a meal without having some version of this conversation:
    Kids: “Who made the